Slashdot videos: Now with more Slashdot!

View

Discuss

Share

We've improved Slashdot's video section; now you can view our video interviews, product close-ups and site visits with all the usual Slashdot options to comment, share, etc. No more walled garden! It's a work in progress -- we hope you'll check it out (Learn more about the recent updates).

crookedvulture (1866146) writes "Microsoft unveiled its Surface Pro 3 tablet at a press event in New York this morning. The device has a larger 12" screen with a 2160x1440 display resolution and a novel 3:2 aspect ratio. Intel Core processors provide the horsepower, starting with the Core i3 in the base model and extending all the way up to Core i7 in pricier variants. The tablet is just 9.1 mm thick, which Microsoft claims is the thinnest ever for a Core-based device. Microsoft developed a new radial fan that's suppose to distribute airflow evenly inside the chassis without generating audible noise. The tablet weights 800 g, shaving 100 g off the Surface Pro 2, and it's supposed to have longer battery life, as well. Microsoft has also rolled out new keyboard accessories, a pressure-sensitive stylus, and a docking station that supports 4K video output. The Surface Pro 3 is scheduled to be available tomorrow with prices starting at $799."Update: 05/20 17:12 GMT by T: Mary Jo Foley points out at ZDNet that one thing not announced today is an ARM-powered Mini version.

Yeah, but then you couldn't carry your entire desktop with you wherever you want. The Surface 2 already had enough power to be a desktop replacement to all but the most demanding users. You can connect 4 monitors to the Surface Pro. Plug in a USB keyboard and mouse and most people wouldn't need another computer. If I had the cash I would definitely just buy Surface Pro and forget all about having separate desktop/laptop/tablet. I got the Surface 2 (not pro), and even that has allowed me to completely forget about my laptop and desktop unless I need to do some actual work. Surfing the web, watching videos, listening to music. I use my Surface for all of that. As far as home use goes, if I wasn't a developer, I probably wouldn't even need a "proper" computer.

Microsoft had to develop a a power Surface or face losing the table and desktop world. Microsoft's control of the desktop is an illusion that we all believe. The minute most people realize they don't need Microsoft-specific tools to do what they do, Microsoft is sunk.

Likewise, Google and Apple have a limited window (no pun intended) of opportunity in which they can dethrone Microsoft. With the introduction of this tablet, they may have missed that opportunity. All Microsoft needs is a tablet to be "

There are some people who actually prefer Windows(7, not 8) to everything else.

Tried Linux in early 90s, not the best experience.

Tried Mac in 2013 for 6 months, not an awesome experience. Never freed up large amounts of memory unless i did it manually, adobe products temp files took up 130gb and not intuitive to find and delete, little things like single clicking on a long file name to see the whole file from the desk top or even finder was impossible. That was important to me since my photo file names are

Tried Mac in 2013 for 6 months, not an awesome experience. Never freed up large amounts of memory unless i did it manually, adobe products temp files took up 130gb and not intuitive to find and delete, little things like single clicking on a long file name to see the whole file from the desk top or even finder was impossible. That was important to me since my photo file names are usually pretty long(Latename - date - sequence). It didnt work for the way that "I" work so it wasnt an option. Plus, bought the MBP maxed out for 2500, couldnt sell if for more than 1300. Complete waste of money and time for me.

If you didn't like it, you didn't like it, and that's fine... you should certainly work using whatever tools you feel most comfortable with. But your specific points I don't get.

Why are you trying to micromanage memory usage? This isn't the 90's. The OS will free up memory when it is needed. Any memory that is just sitting around "free" is memory wasted. The best way to check if you're running into memory constraints is to check if the OS is using swap at all (Mavericks has a nice memory pressure graph t

Wait, wait, wait... first you assert that he's not able to carry around his "entire desktop" wherever he wants, then you go on to say:

I got the Surface 2 (not pro), and even that has allowed me to completely forget about my laptop and desktop unless I need to do some actual work

...and go on to talk about how you don't even need a computer if you didn't have that whole code-writing thing to bother with. So, well, which is it?

Meanwhile, the reason I originally wanted to say something: With VPN and RDP/SSH, I can carry around entire effing servers wherever I want when I'm traveling, and access them from my smartphone if I wanted to - so even that one argument of yours is rather moot.

(Now in my typical use case, I doodle in CG/3D artwork when I travel, and they ain't made a tablet yet that could render even a single frame w/o sucking the battery dry, so I carry around an MBP.)

The Surface 2 (not pro) is the ARM version they sell for $500. The Surface 2 PRO or Surface 3 PRO are the Intel x86-64 versions which will run any standard Windows software. I have the ARM version, and even that's enough provided you are just browsing the web and doing a few other small tasks. If you get the Surface PRO which comes with an Intel x86-64 processor, you can run full Windows, and all the applications you'd normally run on Windows. You could use it as your regular computer.

With VPN and RDP/SSH, I can carry around entire effing servers wherever I want when I'm traveling, and access them from my smartphone if I wanted to - so even that one argument of yours is rather moot.

Can you get service on that smartphone for $84? That's how much I pay per year (not month) for my current phone because it doesn't have a data plan attached to it. A separate laptop lets me do work while riding transit without having to pay a huge data bill for VPN and RDP/SSH. For the price of a two-year data plan in this country, I could almost buy a Surface Pro 3.

Can you get service on that smartphone for $84? That's how much I pay per year

I do it for $45/mo

Or $540 per year, which is $456 per year more than the voice-only service that I mentioned.

receiving email, playing games on it. Oh, and the company pays for that anyway because I receive corporate email on it too.

If your employer happens to be willing to pay the cell bill, a terminal that mostly gets web, mail, phone, and RDP might be ideal. But not everybody's employer is. Despite this, too many pundits have deluded themselves into thinking that such terminals are ideal for so many people that manufacturers should stop making affordable general-purpose computing devices with a robust offline mode. Besides, what happens to you

The way I read it he says a Surface *Pro* would be a perfect replacement for whatever people currently do on their computer; and more. But, since he has a non-Pro version of the Surface (read: the non-intel version) he himself is 'forced' to fall back on his 'real' computers to do some stuff related to his development work.

Makes perfect sense to me; and indeed, a Surface Pro works perfectly well as both the traditional tablet while also being a perfect desktop replacement... or vice versa. You can hate Micr

Huh? My Nexus can fit inside a compartment along side my notebook, and still take up less room than this critter with keyboard and other peripherals. This product seems to solve a problem I do not have.

Surfing the web, watching videos, listening to music: you can do all of that on an iPad 1. How is this a selling point for an $800 tablet again? The whole point of a Windows tablet (@ $800 price point) for most people is that you can use it to do actual work. If you're needing to pull out your laptop or go to your desktop for that, the device is missing the mark.

I do everything from coding to writing presentations or documents and any other business related tasks on my little 9 inch 3 year old Asus Transformer Tablet. Sadly gaming is the one thing I see a lack of on my android tablet, most games require the internet to work and want to suck my wallet dry nickle and diming me. I tossed my laptop as anything other than a video playback device when I'm at home (instead of using a TV), so I can watch something while doing other tasks on my desktop... Most of which is g

Your use cases are yours and yours alone, and therefore are lacking diversity. The size is killer for artists. The aspect ratio and the ability to tilt down is perfect for students. For me, the size and weight make it even better than my Surface Pro for a UAV ground station. No other tablets adequately address users with needs like these.

"Pulling" my laptop out means just pulling it out. It means finding a flat surface if i want to do serious work, so I don't see how a Surface Pro is going to make any difference in that department. If it's just checking email, reviewing documents, spreadsheets and that kind of work, frankly i find my Nexus more than fills the role.

Ultimately I see no point to this device for the way i work. If I need a keyboard, I have my notebook, if I don't, then my tablet does the job. The price tag for this is just nuts

It depends on what "serious work" is for you. If you ultimately see no purpose for your work, that's completely fine. But for me and many others, serious work involves standing and writing. Or controlling a computer in the field with no tables available. Or creative type work like drawing. Or scientific/engineering work like solving equations or drawing diagrams.

It's also the point of diminishing returns. The difference between a 7 hour device and an 8 hour device is huge; you can get through the whole day with one and fall an hour short with the other. 8 to 9 is not as much of a gain. Anything more and you're charging it after work anyway.

Damn it, how is it phones and tablets keep getting these awesome high-rez screens, yet it's impossible to buy a laptop with anything better than 1366 x 768 for less than 1K?

You get what you pay for, and when a laptop OEM goes cheap, the first thing to go is screen resolution. Bite the bullet and spend a the extra dosh for a good laptop. As a bonus, it'll last a lot longer - often long enough to give you a better ROI than the 2-3 cheaper laptops you'd be buying during the same time period.

>often long enough to give you a better ROI than the 2-3 cheaper laptops you'd be buying during the same time period.

Correct. I bought one of the very first 1080p laptops so long ago that I don't remember when I got it, and it's still running great. The only thing I've had to replace is the battery. Yes it's big by today's standards, but it works fine with current software after all these years.

Microsoft seems a totally confused company at the moment. I bet more than 50% of all tablets are 7" screen size or less. The reason the iPad at about 10" is good is bcos of touch based apps for that platform.

12" is way too big for a tablet and $700 is about 3 times the ideal price point. This device will get hammered by Android tablets by the low-price customers; and anybody who can afford $700 for a tablet would close their eyes and buy the iPad which has 100 times more useful touch based apps than the Surface Pro.

The desktop OS is best navigated with a keyboard in Microsoft's opinion. The best Surface Pro apps are those designed for the desktop, such as Excel and Word.

Looks like a very confused company determined to throw another $1bn in a vain effort to get 2% marketshare in tablets. Gates or Ballmer or Nadella, nobody seems to have any clue about desktops, tablets or smartphones.

Microsoft seems a totally confused company at the moment. I bet more than 50% of all tablets are 7" screen size or less.

Because 90% of tablets are used for content consumption. One may say that this is a feedback loop, people consume content, tablets get smaller, so all people can do is consume content.

Microsoft is saying they want to make a tablet that is good for content creation. That's why it's bigger. That's why it comes with a pen. You say 12" is way to big, and I ask for whom? For me, 12" is the size of my paper notebook, and the Surface 3 would work well in that application while a 7" tablet would not. You say $

Microsoft is saying they want to make a tablet that is good for content creation. That's why it's bigger. That's why it comes with a pen.

In my view, content creation is best done with keyboard, mouse and a desktop / laptop. What sort of content can be created with a stylus on a tablet? That's neither the best tools nor the most cost effective.

Cadillacs and Toyotas are both good at transporting people from one place to another. A 12" tablet cannot do most things possible on a smaller phone or a larger deskt

In my view, content creation is best done with keyboard, mouse and a desktop / laptop. What sort of content can be created with a stylus on a tablet? That's neither the best tools nor the most cost effective.

When is the last time you painted a picture with your keyboard or mouse? People make different content. Obviously the content you make it with a keyboard+mouse, sitting down at a desk, in an office probably.

A 12" tablet cannot do most things possible on a smaller phone or a larger desktop.

And smaller phones and desktop computer can't do things a 12" tablet can. My Cadillac vs. Toyota line was more about the specs of the device. 7" tablets are slow as hell. Surface Pro 3 is the most powerful tablet available. Saying $799 is too much needs qualification. It's too much for a 7" device, but i

they're going after the laptop market.... This will sell ridiculously well in the enterprise.

The laptop is a very long-lived well-researched device that has tons of applications available on that form factor. Running MS Office on a tablet device will have users tearing their hair out and getting aspirin tablets to rid their headaches.

I'll bet they didn't show this 12" screen running any of the legacy windows apps

What do people generally buy tablets for? In my view tablets are best for consuming content, with about 5% input done through keyboard. Except for watching movies, or for super exotic porn watching, 12" is a horrible form factor.

About half the Android tablets I've seen are used for dual purposes - making phone calls, as well as viewing mails, videos, Whatsapp and what not. A 12" tablet for making calls would make as much sense

Because you can break a single high-rez panel down into multiple smaller screens, but cannot stitch smaller panels up into a larger one? Manufacturing creates defects, and the larger the screen the greater the waste if a screen has a defect.

It's worse than that. This thing has a 3:2 screen. You know how many people would buy a laptop with a 3:2 screen and this many pixels? A lot. But laptop manufacturers are so in freaking love with widescreen now that it's just not going to happen. It's so frustrating. I've been on the hunt for a new laptop for a year and a half now, and nothing fits my needs. I'm not even asking for super low cost here. A $1000 or $1200 laptop would be totally fine, but manufacturers treat these tablet level displays

There's a few sites where you can buy an aftermarket panel of your choosing, assuming you're semi handy with a screw driver.Example, I bought an asus g74sx a few years back, and it came with a 17.3 inch 1680 lcd (not sure why they'd pick that resolution for a 'gaming' laptop?)

But, http://www.laptopscreen.com/ [laptopscreen.com] had a 1080p replacement for just over $100 delivered. Not affiliated with them in any way -- they had a good price, and surprisingly fast shipping. (Despite how sketchy the site looks.)

... good to see that others have finally followed apple's lead (and google's with the chromebook) and realised that 16x9 isn't the be all and end all, and closer-to-square aspect can actually fit more content. It's not just about movies.

Pricing is reasonable, still totally NOT sold on the kick-stand idea, have run a surface 2 for a week and did not like. Would much prefer the ability to run it like an ipad with a touch cover on a desk, rather than vertical like a pc monitor or laptop.

That said, i think the biggest bugbear is going to be Windows 8. It doesn't work very well with touch either. Yes, as I said above I've run a surface 2 for a week and did not like. Will be interesting to see whether it can have other OSes loaded onto it, but really the other other available tablet OS with software support is android. And if you're going down that path you're competing with some very cheap hardware.

Agreed. Windows 8 is going to be a strategic problem for Microsoft going forward. The reputation of Windows 8 is so soiled presently, that I doubt it is going to be an easy sell, even on touch screens.

After using a surface pro 2 for a week, i reckon Windows 8 actually works better with mouse and keyboard than touch by a long shot. The problem is the apps. There aren't any for touch that actually do anything productive. Shitty little app store type stuff isn't the reason I'm going to buy a Windows tablet. I'm going to buy a windows tablet because i want to do business stuff on an AD domain. If i wanted to run mobile app type stuff i'd just buy an iPad or Android tablet for half the price.

The problem with touch is that it's not really thought out by the software makers. There are exceptions. Bluebeam makes a PDF program for professionals that lets you edit and annotate. On a digitizer Win8 tablet, like this or my Sony Flip, fingers are used to zoom and pan, while the digitizer is used for writing on the screen. There's never a mixup between the two like occurs with an iPad, where even the best BT-linked styli are hit and miss (and still only work properly in special "aware" apps).

The biggest downside to W8 is the lack of ability to go all-fingers when you want to, but that would require touch-optimized apps for nearly everything, and the vendors just aren't feeling the need to go there.

I used a surface pro for all of about 2 hours and returned it to the store. I was lined up to pay >$900 for a surface pro that didn't come with a keyboard. The touch screen in win8 isn't even smart enough to pop up an on screen keyboard when I touch a blank to type. I have to make the keyboard pop up, then move the screen around to see what I'm typing if the kb covers it up. Amazingly unintuitive. Couple this with a GUI that keeps funneling me into the puzzle pieces view... and trying to find apps that are not organized in alphabetical order..... again, amazingly unintuitive. Now they tell us it has a 3:2 aspect ratio? WhoTF is making these decisions?

Yup. those were the problems i noticed too - erratic touch keyboard behavior, unusable win32 application widgets at 1920x1080 on a 10" screen, etc. The 3:2 aspect is a plus though for a table tin my opinion - 16x9 form factor tablet just feel awkward and unwieldy - it isn't tall enough when used in landscape mode and isn't wide enough and feels too tall when used in portrait. 3:2 or 4:3 is a much better compromise for something that feels good to hold and has decent screen area.

The surface I used was an extended evaluation unit for work. I could have kept it for work use for "free" (work paid), but gave it back and went back to the ipad (primary work uses being VMware View, ssh, mail, etc.).

All of the windows apps I want Windows for are win32 and the widgets are un-usably small on 1920x1080 on a 10" screen. Try using Outlook 2010 for example.

The on screen keyboard pops up sometimes, sometimes does not, somtimes covers the win32 application I am trying to use.

The metro side of Windows 8 is good enough for touch, but the fact is that very few people want a windows tablet in order to run the apps available in the Metro UI. They want to run office and other enterprise apps. And currently t

So your argument is that applications not built for touch are hard to use on touch. Makes enough sense. But with a reasonable DPI setting and the pen I find working with the desktop and Win32 apps is easy enough. I still want to do heavy keyboard input with an actual keyboard, but running my Surface Pro as a UAV ground station using a non-touch optimized app is easy and better than using a laptop.

... good to see that others have finally followed apple's lead (and google's with the chromebook) and realised that 16x9 isn't the be all and end all, and closer-to-square aspect can actually fit more content. It's not just about movies.

Closer-to-square absolutely sucks for content. If you look at any publications which actually approach square (e.g. magazines), you'll see that although the page is close to square, they break up the text into columns. Because square sucks for the actual content.

I'm well aware of the macbook pricing, i own one. I said reasonable because it is in the ballpark for a high-res screen, 12" form factor and core i series CPU. I consider reasonable to be within say 10-15% either way. The Surface runs Windows natively so if you need windows that is a plus the Macbook does not have going for it. A windows license is extra. Surface RT, now that pricing was taking the piss. No native win32, inferior hardware to ipad, more expensive...

MacBook Air - Intel® Core i5, 128 GB and 4 GB of RAM - $899
Keyboard included
Touch screen not available
Digitizer not available
Pen not available
1366 x 768 included. Hi-res display not available
Total - $899

It's 2014. A computer is not just CPU + RAM + HDD anymore. For instance, part of Apple's marketing of the MacBook air was how thin and light it is. Surface Pro 3 is even *thinner and ligher* than the Air. For someone looking for a thin and light device, thinness and lightness is part of the value proposition, and they might be willing to pay more for that.

You can say that the Surface costs less than the Air, but you cannot say they are the same. Surface includes more tech than the Air. I also left out things like two mics, two cameras (one of which is 5MP while the best on the Air is 720p), gyroscope, accelerometer, magnetometer. Fact is if you want the thinnest, lightest, laptop with the best display, and latest tech, it's not the MacBook Air. Compare the price of the two, but be honest about what you're actually comparing.

Um, yeah I can, no shit? I mean, 1366x768 is the same resolution as the original Surface (RT, not Pro) and the limitations of that display are totally obvious when browsing the web or trying to view documents side-by-side. Forget serious coding (yes, I jailbroke the RT so I can run an IDE on it, but that doesn't make up for the resolution problem). I don't know, maybe you're half blind, but I'm 27 and have 20/20 vision, and quite happily use 1920x1080 on a 10" screen... 1366x768 on an 11.6" screen sucks. Th

You do realize you're getting a full blown intel core CPU here. This isn't in the same league as some cheap low power ARM cpu, it's much more powerful. You could realistically use one as a desktop replacement.

You could use it as a desktop replacement assuming you're not using it for anything that's computationally expensive, hook it up to a decent size monitor and add a keyboard/mouse. Although, if you're willing to do that, you could get a better spec desktop for ~$500 and still have $300 to spend on a separate tablet. There are advantages to each setup, but the former is a "one size fits all" solution, whereas the latter can be customized to the specific needs of the user.

My personal opinion is that the Surface makes too many compromises trying to be everything to everyone and it ends up being a poor value as a desktop replacement and is rather clunky as a tablet. That means that the market is limited to people who highly value both size/portability and not having multiple devices and there's significant competition in that market from small laptops.

Pretty much that. 8 GB is enough to run a couple of VMs anyway - but if you want to run much more than that you'll likely run out of storage, kill your battery, etc. Get a server, and just use the tablet for what it is good at - displaying content processed elsewhere on the network.

"equivalent" Surface 3. Surface 3 has a touch screen, active digitizer, and is lighter and thinner with a larger display and more resolution. Hard to really enjoy that 1366 × 768 display compared to 2160 x 1440 on the Surface 3. I'll take all of the above $100 more, thanks.

Touch and pen both work fine in the classic desktop. Been using both there for years. Also, it is going to be really funny if "1366X768 is good enough for standard use position" becomes the official Apple marketing line.

You see if you can actually notice a difference in resolution from a standard use position.

Are you half-blind? This isn't even difficult to see. The Macbook Air had a low resolution even by last decade's standards.

"1366 x 768 ought to be enough for anybody" (for a 13" device held at a little less than arm's length, as necessitated by the keyboard). Wow. Any product that markets that as the peak of human vision is one I don't want to buy.

I already own an Acer Iconia 11.3 in tablet with Core I5 chip, which I bought to view Google Play magazines that didn't display well on my Nexus 7. The Iconia tablet turned out to be a fantastic tablet that I'm very happy with. The new Surface Pro 3 seems very appealing to me as well, and has great specs. My only problem is that when you go from the 64GB model to the 128GB model they charge an extra 200 dollars. A 128GB SSD drive goes for about 100 dollars, so we are talking about a 50 dollar increase in p

But here's the problem...it's still running Windows 8 which nearly everyone seems to hate. Same thing with the phone. Nice Nokia hardware but shitty OS.

MS continues to make the mistake of comparing their hardware to the Mac hardware by only examining the hardware specs. They fail to look at it holistically. What's cool about Macs is that they run so smoothly. It's not about horsepower, it's about design. Something that is sorely lacking in Windows 8.

I predict that MS will sell quite a few of these in the enterprise market and almost none in the consumer space (well, almost none compared to the number of android and iPads that get sold).

What everyone seemed to want was a 7 inch Surface not a 12 inch Surface. Once again, MS fails to give consumers what they are asking for. Even Apple swallowed it's pride and came out with a 7 inch iPad. Why? Because it was obvious that consumers wanted it and tons of android tables with that form factor were flying off the shelves. So Apple was late to that market but at least they had enough sense to realize that they had made a mistake.

MS still has that monopolistic mindset. They don't seem to want to listen to what people want. They send out product after product to the marketplace only to lose millions of dollars on it and abandon it shortly thereafter.

What MS desperately wants to stop is the notion that you can get everything done without using any MS software or hardware. And that day is rapidly approaching if it's not already here. This new Surface will do nothing to slow that down.

Same experience here.Can't speak about the mobile/ultramobile parts, but the HD4400 in a low-end desktop i3 is plenty fast enough for basic desktop compositing/video playback/... at 4k.Now, if you don't want a slideshow in 3D games, easiest option is to just run them at 1920x1080 or 1280x720 fullscreen.Those resolutions also happen to be HD and FullHD, and can be cleanly pixel-doubled/tripled to 3840x2160.There's plenty benchmarks on the net for various games and haswell IGPs at HD and FullHD res.

a) CAD will be fine unless you're doing insanely complicated stuffb) Rendering on the go is generally a bad idea. The idea is to edit on the go.c) WTF? Why the hell would you want your tablet mining cryptocoins? Do you expect your refrigerator to cool your house?d) GPU-accelerated apps that aren't happy with this kind of performance are few, mostly those from points a) and b)

How so? As I understand it, the rule with Windows 8 is that on ARM, the manufacturer MUST NOT allow the end user to modify Secure Boot, but on x86, it MUST. This product is x86 according to the summary

The Surface Pro, like any other x86 PC that comes preinstalled with an OEM version of Windows 8/8.1, is locked down with Secure Boot UEFI. However, Microsoft follows its own rules--the Surface Pro also meets their own requirement that the BIOS allows you to disable Secure Boot given physical access.

Also, I believe that the Surface Pro's preconfigured UEFI Secure Boot NVRAM contains the Microsoft "Third Party Marketplace" UEFI certificate, which if true would mean that the Surface Pro would out-of-the-box recognize, as an example, the Secure Boot-compatible GRUB2 on the 14.x x86-64 Ubuntu disks as legitimate. I don't have a Surface Pro to check this, however.

Why? Because if you go on a trip, you don't want to be carrying around 2 sets of cables, chargers, etc. You'll have to sync data between devices, two data plans (unless you tether one to the other, which is a crap way of working also). The whole selling point of the device is that you can do away with all that crap. The convenience over 3 years of ownership is surely worth a few hundred bucks if it comes down to price.

I think you're wrong. Table top computers are not new. They have been around for years and you can get one from several different vendors (including Microsoft). When is the last time you saw someone really using one in a consumer space? If there was such a market as you suggest we would see them more.

Give us a 40" desk surface like you guys demonstrated over 5 years ago.

Stop trying to compete where you already lost before you even started, grab onto the market that you own most of the patents for and there is NO competition in right now and run with it.

and yes, there IS a market for $2500 price point for a 37 - 42" coffee table size real surface device. If people are buying $800 ipads in droves, then something like a real surface table will sell for a higher price point.

Perhaps they have calculated that the first to go into that market will be the loser. Microsoft isn't really good at introducing new products anymore (were they ever?).